Goodbye Dick Smith, Australian electronics retail giant, gone forever

Goodbye Dick Smith, we’ll miss you. This weekend will see the end of one of Australia’s largest electronics retailers and as the end draws close, the stock prices have been progressively slashed to move everything, including store shelves, eftpos machines and even the security gates at the entrance to the stores.

After a visit to the Albury Dick Smith store this morning, its a sight that hits you in the heart, empty shelves, the entire gaming section cordoned off, just a single TV remaining for sale and for sale, closing down signs everywhere. You can’t help but feel for the innocent victims in the corporate horror story, the staff. I overheard one staff member telling a customer, “the proceeds from the sale of remaining stock goes to ensuring they can pay entitlements”. What a sad end to it all.

One of the best deals still available was a Panasonic 55″ UHD TV (TH55CX640A) for $1,494.35, down from the sticker price of $2,299. This was the last one, not the last model, but the last TV the store had, it was out of the box, so technically used, but not a bad deal. The other big area of discounts remaining seemed to be batteries, what used to cost $30, was often marked down to just $1-$2, which shows the difficulty of selling very specific battery sizes by a certain date.

Yesterday I noticed the Dick Smith website links from the navigation had already been updated to reflect the new owner of the online component, Kogan. Today however, they have returned to a Dick Smith category page like for TVs, I suspect this was a test of an upcoming change that will take place once Dick Smith retail closes forever.